The Festival of Beef and Pork and the Right to Eat in India

As the issues rocks the entire nation, students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) also planned a similar festival, but later called off fearing the possible fallout. The highly explosive debate of food politics reached the JNU campus when a community of students launched ‘JNU Beef-Pork Eating Campaign’ and the campaigners describe themselves as - “beef and pork eaters and people who do not care about the mythic claims of ‘holy cow’ and ‘unholy pig’. The reactions to this movement have not caused any violence in JNU, but a counter campaign is up called ‘Students against beef and pork’.

As the politics surrounding beef eating in India becomes a topic of discussion again, the supports call it’s their right to eat while the opponents say it will hurt the sentiments of millions.

Can the biggest democracy put a blanket ban on a particular type of meat? asks the organizers of the festival (Dalit and Left-wing students). In an interview to Firstpost, Premjish Achari, one of the students behind the JNU Beef-Pork Eating Campaign’said, “We started this group online to discuss issues on cow slaughter and the politics of it, about how vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism is used by the right wing fundamentalists as an assertion to propagate cultural nationalism.”